Victoria Azarenka Handily Beats Barbora Strycova at Australian Open

MELBOURNE, Australia — Her seeding is not yet back in line with her quality of play, nor the expectations placed upon her.

Once No. 1, Victoria Azarenka is just No. 14 on the draw sheet at this Australian Open, but she is rumbling through the early rounds like a member of the elite, and it would come as no surprise at this stage to see her in another final in Melbourne, where she won back-to-back titles in 2012 and 2013.

Take it from Barbora Strycova, the versatile Czech veteran who has lost to Azarenka at the Australian Open for three straight years: in the second round in 2014, the third round in 2015 and the fourth round on Monday.

Azarenka won, 6-2, 6-4, this time, which in her current state of grace felt rather like a moral victory for the 29-year-old Strycova.

“I have to say she is very hungry.” Strycova said. “I felt like last year she was a little bit on and off. But this year you could see she’s working hard on her mental, but also on her physical. She’s very hungry, and she’s the one who can think about the trophy.”

No. 1 Serena Williams, No. 4 Agnieszka Radwanska and No. 5 Maria Sharapova are still in contention in the top half of the draw, but Azarenka, the 26-year-old from Belarus, remains the clear favorite to reach the final out of the bottom half.

Fitter, quicker and happy in her private life, she is 9-0 in 2016 after winning her opening tournament of the year in Brisbane, and she has yet to drop a set, or even come close to dropping one. Strycova’s getting to 6-4 was the best any rival has done so far.

Now for the caveat: Of Azarenka’s nine opponents in 2016, four have been ranked outside the top 100 and only two — Angelique Kerber and Roberta Vinci — have been ranked in the top 20.

Azarenka will get a rematch with seventh-seeded Kerber in the quarterfinals here. Kerber defeated Annika Beck, an unseeded German, 6-4, 6-0, on Monday. The winner of that match will earn a spot in the semifinals against either 47th-ranked Johanna Konta of Britain or Zhang Shuai of China, who is ranked 133rd.

Konta ousted No. 21 seed Ekaterina Makarova, semifinalist here last year, 4-6, 6-4, 8-6, to became the first British woman since Jo Durie in 1983 to advance to the quarterfinals in Australia. Zhang, a qualifier who was considering retiring after this tournament, earned a 3-6, 6-3, 6-3 victory over No. 15 Madison Keys, who was in pain for most of the last two sets because of an adductor injury.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Sascha Bajin, Azarenka’s hitting partner and fitness coach. “But she’s playing very well. I see that match with Kerber being a tough one. Kerber’s a tough lefty out there. The surface is fast, which suits Vika a little bit, but let’s see.”

Azarenka and Kerber played one of the most gripping matches of the 2015 season. It came in the third round of the United States Open, with Azarenka winning, 7-5, 2-6, 6-4, in just under three hours.

But their match in the Brisbane final was much less suspenseful, as Azarenka broke open a tight first set and went on to win, 6-3, 6-1.

“To play against Vika is tough, because you always have to try to do something more, and that’s really a pressure,” Strycova said.

Strycova certainly tried plenty of different tactics to break Azarenka’s fearsome rhythm: conjuring drop shots that forced Azarenka to sprint forward; slicing returns as well as driving them; rushing the net cleverly and effectively; and even serving and volleying at one stage.

It was a welcome helping of variety in a women’s game, where powerful ball striking is the customary fare.

But for all Strycova’s changes of pace and remarkable court coverage, the result was the same in 2014 and 2015: a straight-sets defeat.

Afterward, Azarenka was overjoyed with the victory, although not the victory that you might expect.

“Can someone please tell me, did the Broncos win?” she asked the crowd during her post-match interview on court.

Yes, the Denver Broncos did beat the New England Patriots to reach the Super Bowl, and Azarenka, who made the United States her training base in her teens and now owns a home in Manhattan Beach, Calif., clearly has assimilated, at least in part, to American life.

“I was emotional the whole morning about it,” she said. “I turned on TV while I was having breakfast, and I just couldn’t look over there, because, you know, I’m a huge sports fan, so when I’m a fan of somebody, I’m a die-hard. I’ll get nervous. I get emotional.”

For further evidence of her fandom, see her standard 2016 victory celebration: the Dab, popularized in the sports world by Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton, who is also going to the Super Bowl.

“It’s such a big sport in the states,” she said. “You can’t miss it. Like you go to the bar, and it’s always showing: baseball or football. I like to get into it. I think once I start to understand American football more, it showed so much how strategic the game is, and that’s fascinated me.”

But the eyes of the tennis world are increasingly on her at this stage. Injuries, above all a neuroma in her left foot, slowed her progress in 2014 and 2015, although she was still a strong presence last season, playing and losing classic matches with Williams in Madrid and at the French Open and Wimbledon.

But when she finished the year, her ranking had climbed only from 32 to 22. She decided to address her physical problems, including the neuroma, and to get back in top shape.

“At the beginning of October we tried to find a solution for the foot, and by the beginning of November she was ready,” said her coach, Wim Fissette. “She did eight weeks of training before the season, eight really tough weeks. It has helped her to start the season the way she has.”

The question now is, how she will finish off the Australian Open.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page D2 of the New York edition with the headline: Azarenka Handily Beats a Familiar Foe. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe